It analyzes the results of an opinion poll carried out by the Population Rehabilitation Center for the Underprivileged - CEAP, and by the Research, Information and Public Politics Center from the Fluminense Federal University (DATAUFF). During the period of January 28th and April 13th 2000, people were asked about racial relationships in Rio de Janeiro. The text points out the limitation of an individualistic approach of racism, the difficulties faced by empirical researches in terms of measuring racial prejudice, and suggests some themes that could have been included in the study about racism in Brazil. A research was done by the CEAP-DATAUFF about several themes, in order to not only measure the racial prejudice in Rio de Janeiro, but also to bring to light other themes that are recently discussed, such as: racial identity, perception of the determiners of the Negro situation in Brazil, racial inequality, inter-racial marriages, race-mixing, ethnic vote, other social prejudices against poor people, people from the favelas, women, people from the northeast (nordestinos), homosexuals, social aspirations by race, the fluminenses' understanding of proposals to implement an affirmative action politics.